What Are YOU Afraid Of?

When I taught 7th grade English, I taught Greek and Latin roots, and phobia was among those roots. The class would make all the words they could think of with the root. The most common phobia words that most of us know are claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces), arachnophobia (fear of spiders), agoraphobia (fear of the marketplace: fear of going out in public), and hydrophobia (fear of water).

However, there are thousands of phobias for all things imaginable and other things unimaginable (a later post!). Here are some phobias for those of you afraid of creep, crawly things and animals:

acrophobia — insects that cause itching

agrizoophobia — wild animals

ailurophobia — cats (there are at least three other words for this fear including felinophobia, of course)

alektorophobia — chickens

apiphobia — bees (there are other words for this phobia)

bufonophobia — toads

chiroptophobia — bats

cynophobia — dogs

doraphobia — animal fur or skin

entomophobia — insects

equinophobia — horses

herpetophobia — reptiles

ichthyophobia — fish

isopterophobia — termites

katsaridaphobia — cockroaches

lutraphobia — otters

mottephobia — moths

musophobia — mice (there are a few other names too )

myrmecophobia — ants

ophidiophobia — snakes (also snakephobia!)

ornithophobia — birds

ostraconophobia — shellfish ( no, not ostriches)

pediculophobia — lice (and ped means child…..hmmmmmm)

ranidaphobia — frogs

scoleciphobia — worms

selachophobia — sharks

spheksophobia — wasps (that’s my phobia!)

teniophobia – tapeworms

taurophobia — bulls

zemmiphobia — the great mole rat

zoophobia — animals

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” That would be phobophobia!

Many times we talk about grammar in terms of writing. This blog post is about speaking. We don’t need to worry about punctuation when we speak, but we do have to worry about grammar—and pronunciation (which we don’t have to worry about when we write).

A while ago, one of my readers asked me to write a post about my life as a self-publisher. However, before I became a self-publisher (or “indie” publisher, as we like to call it), I was a writer for a very long time. I think most people who write have been writing for most of their lives.